Our events

Upcoming and past events

The United States Centre hosts wide and varied events, with the aim to build upon a history of engagement between the LSE and the United States. Our events are free and open to the public, unless specified otherwise.

The violent and costly drug war that has been raging on in Mexico has received a huge amount of international attention and coverage, especially since the Mexican government’s escalation of the war in 2006. This public lecture will re-evaluate the history of the drug war in Mexico by bringing together two eminent historians to examine the crucial developments of Mexican drug policy and its discourse on drugs over the past 100 years.

The deployment of armies, navies, military assets and militarised approaches can send a powerful message, but have produced mixed results. This debate, co hosted between the LSE US Centre and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime discussed four different areas of criminality – wildlife crime, piracy, human smuggling and drug trafficking – to see how effective a militarised response can really be, and what might be lost as collateral damage.

Webinar for LSE staff and students on Roper Center for Public Opinion Research31 October 2017

The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research is the largest archive of public opinion survey data in existence. It’s also available for LSE students and staff to use in their research. Together with the LSE Library, the US Centre co-hosted a webinar on the Roper Center’s collection of public opinion data and how LSE staff and students can use it.

Katherine Cramer explored how rural American resentment toward cities and the urban elite can provide fertile ground for right-leaning candidates to win elections, and the implications of this on contemporary politics in the US and beyond.

The US Centre hosted a roundtable debate about the 45th US President’s first 100 days in office. A panel of academics and journalists discussed the new administration’s priorities and the international implications of the current US political landscape.

Neil Foley explored how the surge in immigration since the 1970s has led to increasing levels of xenophobia resulting in anti-immigrant politics and policies, including militarization of the border, state laws curtailing rights of undocumented immigrants, mass detention and deportation, the building of a 700-mile border fence in 2006, and Donald Trump’s recent promise to build a wall along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

The LSE US Centre and the LSESU Grimshaw Club held a career development workshop for students where Professor Charles Kupchan discussed his experiences and answered questions on entering the field of International Relations.

The new US Administration has elements that are perhaps unique in American history, and Republicans are in the rare position of controlling both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. The Democrats have much to consider as they re-group both inside the Beltway and around the nation. Former Members of the US House of Representatives from both the Republican and Democratic Parties discussed their thoughts on the altered political landscape of the US and its implications abroad.

As part of the 2017 LSE Literary Festival, Yuval Levin discussed his new book, The Fractured Republic. Levin's talk covered how US politics are failing 21st-century Americans as both parties are blind to how America has changed over the past half century and why the dysfunctions of the nation's fragmented national life will need to be answered by the strengths of its decentralized, diverse, dynamic character.

Larry Jacobs and Desmond King discussed their new book, Fed Power: How Finance Wins, which traces the Fed's historic development during the 19th century to its current position as the most important institution in the American economy, possessing unparalleled capacity and autonomy to intervene in private markets.

A lively evening of discussion with media and academic experts on US politics reviewing the unprecedented results of the 2016 US presidential election, as well as insights into what we can expect from the incoming Donald Trump administration.

Financial inequality is one of the biggest political issues of our time: from the Wall Street bailouts to the rise of the One Percent, who between them control forty-percent of the US wealth. So where are the Democrats - the notional 'party of the people' in all of this?

Marc Hetherington examined why Americans today viscerally dislike and distrust the party opposite the one they identify with more than at any point in the last 100 years, and how these negative feelings are central to understanding the political dysfunction and gridlock that has gripped the U.S. for the past decade.

Nearly 60 years on from the first televised presidential debates, how candidates look and act in such competitive contexts is as important as ever. Erik Bucy of Texas Tech University discussed his research into non-verbal cues in presidential debates and the 2016 presidential election.

Heightening tensions in the US over police killings of black people have undermined confidence that the election of Barack Obama signaled a new era on race relations in the US. Through a Critical Race Theory prism, Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw discussed Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name as challenges to contemporary jurisprudence on race, and assessed the new openings presented by current events.

Professor Margaret Weir of Brown University discussed how politics and policies played out across the American federal system create spatial inequalities but also present new opportunities for challenging them.

On the 1st of March millions of American voters in 12 states went to the polls in the 2016 US presidential election's 'Super Tuesday’ primary. The US Centre held a lively evening of discussion and debate on the Super Tuesday results with six experts on US politics.

Professor Lawrence Jacobs, Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and Director of the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, evaluated the most polarizing and anti-establishment candidates in modern US politics, speculated on who will win the nomination and why, and what this might mean for the 2016 presidential election.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and CEO of New America, and former Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, visited LSE and discussed the need to transform gender roles for men as much as women and to reinvent the workplace.

Drawing on early America’s struggle to develop a single currency, Professor Jeffry Frieden discussed the implications for the European Union’s efforts today to provide monetary and financial stability.

The LSE US Centre, together with the Economics Department, hosted the Former Chair of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke. Bernanke discussed his new book, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and its Aftermath, and his time as chair of the US Federal Reserve.

Past Research Seminars

In rural America, recent high and volatile agricultural prices have seen the average commercial farm ascend into the top income percentile of US households.

Joseph Baines is a Fellow in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics.

Religion and the Delegated State in America15 March 2016

Speaker: Margaret Weir

Non-profit organizations have become key arms of the American welfare state. Yet accounts of the rise of the third sector have little to say about the South and the Southwest, areas of the country where population and poverty have grown the most over the past two decades. Historical legacies of race, religion, and immigration gave rise to diverse organizational ecologies for assisting the poor in different parts of the country, resulting in two distinct forms of delegated state in America: a civic-public model in the North and Midwest and a religious-private model in the South and Southwest. These regional differences mean that organized resources for resisting neoliberalism vary systematically in different parts of the country.

Margaret Weir is Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

The American Democratic Deficit24 February 2016

Speaker: Lawrence Jacobs

American presidents often claim to speak for the "people" but new research based on White House archives demonstrates that presidents largely respond to the affluent and well-organized.

Lawrence R. Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Hubert H. Humphrey School and the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.

Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and the Decline of the Eastern Establishment2 February 2016

Speaker: Luke Nichter

Senator, statesman, presidential advisor, and presidential candidate by popular demand, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and his national political career that stretched from the 1930s to the 1970s have up to now escaped biographical treatment.

Luke A. Nichter is an Associate Professor of History at Texas A&M University - Central Texas. He tweets at @lukenic.

Currency Politics, Political Economy and the Gold Standard19 January 2016

Speaker: Jeffry Frieden

For much of the late nineteenth century the United States was a hotbed of exchange rate controversy, but by 1896 the election of William McKinley, the pro-gold candidate, signalled the triumph of the Gold Standard and paved the way for dollar hegemony. What can the experiences of the 1890s tell us about today's currency politics?

Jeffry Frieden is Professor of Government at Harvard University, specializing in the politics of international monetary and financial relations.

The Debate on the Iran Deal: Learned and Unlearned Lessons from History10 November 2015

Speaker: Joseph F Pilat

The debate over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was agreed between Iran and the P5+1 in July 2015, raises fundamental issues about noncompliance, international monitoring and verification and nuclear latency that have been in the forefront of concerns about nonproliferation over the last 25 years. In this session, Joseph F. Pilat discussed lessons learned and unlearned from Iraq, North Korea, South Africa and Libya, and how they shaped the negotiation and content of the agreement and the prospects for the JPCOA’s success, in what will be one of the most important foreign policy legacies of the Obama administration.

Joseph F. Pilat is a Program Manager in the National Security Office of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars where he co-directs the Nonproliferation Forum.